boundaries/responsibilities

[petesh at indigo.ie (Pete Shanahan)]

While I'm riveted by the bug versus flaw debate - as it fundamentally
illustrates the importance of discussing things from the same premise(*), I have
what I would consider to be an interesting tangential issue that has been
bothering me for several years.
I've written many programs (in C, C++) and have never made much effort to make
them input safe. I generally made sure that buffers could not be overrun by
using the 'n' versions of the string functions, and I didn't consider the task
too heavily.
The problem is that my code is in far wider and more varied an environment than
I had ever expected, and I am now concerned that I may be exposed to some form
of liability. This is due to the code having not been issued with any specific
exclusion of warranty; such as would be present in the agreement for the Java
language/environment.


(*) It was my logic lecturer who had an anecdote about two men arguing from
different buildings. A man walks along during one of the arguments and shouts to
the both of them that they will never agree as they are arguing from different
premises.

-- 
Pete    +353 (87) 412 9576 [M] | +353 (66) 71 42367 [H]